The Bluegrass Widow
By Robert Earl Keen
G
It’s been five years come this autumn, she remembers well the day
F C G
The day the fever got him, and took him far away
G
Far away from always knowing that the love they shared was true
F C G
Far away the fiddler’s bowing, the grass forever blue
G
It was in the dead of winter when her man first caught the chill
F C G
And he said he heard the angels singing “Cabin on the Hill”
G
Through the springtime he was groaning “The good times are past and gone”
F C G
By the summer she was moaning “Old lover please come home”
Chorus:
C G
Now she stands out in the midnight in the moonlight all aglow
C G
She prays to Carter Stanley “Won’t you please tell Bill Monroe
C G
Rather be in some dark hollow or some dark deep shady grove
F C G
Than to be a bluegrass wido-o-ow
Spoken word break:
I started listening to bluegrass music in Bryan Duckworth’s rust red 1970 Ford
Maverick. Had an eight track tape deck and an eight track tape of Bill Monroe’s
Greatest Hits. We used to skip second period chemistry and go over to the
Shamrock station across the street from the high school and get a case of Texas
Pride beer. Charge it on my dad’s credit card and get ‘em to write it up as oil
so dad never knew the difference. Then we’d ride around and drink Texas Pride,
listen to Bill Monroe. Soon we got to be bluegrass experts. And we’d stop in
another Shamrock station and get another Texas Pride case, drink that and
listen to the Stanley Brothers and then we’d go get a tape of Jim and Jesse and
it was on to the Kentucky Colonels and Mack Wiseman and the New Grass Revival,
Peter Rowan, and finally I got the brilliant idea one day to take all the
greatest bluegrass song titles in the world and string ‘em together to make
this song right here, The Bluegrass Widow. Quite possibly the worst bluegrass
song ever written.
I did this in tribute to the Front Porch Boys, which was a bluegrass band I was
in in College Station, Texas. We were a little four piece band, we played
weddings and parties and out on the porch and beer joints and one weekend on a
handful of cheap amphetamines, we decided to go to Crockett, Texas. We entered
the International Bluegrass Band Competition and took second place. We could
play faster than anybody in the competition. The other two bands took first and
third, respectively. I met some friends and went off into the night separated
dawn, as the bluegrass songs say. They were standing underneath a giant pine
tree there in Crockett singing the rudest, most grotesque, nastiest bluegrass
songs you’ve ever heard in your life. I’m talking about the kind of song where
not only is the character in the song dead by the end of the song, but he’s
been dismembered as well. And the Front Porch Boys stopped and looked up at me
just long enough to say, “We’re taking bluegrass music where it’s never been
before. And we’re not taking you with us ‘cuz you don’t have that high and
lonesome sound that bluegrass music requires.” Well, I’m not one to fight
failure. I packed up my stuff and left. The Front Porch Boys broke up three
days later when they realized I owned the PA system.
“Will you miss me when I’m gone?” were his final words to her
“Darlin’ think of what you’ve done,” then replied his Knoxville girl
And the leaves had started turning when his mind began to fail
Then he broke down in a breakdown, now she wears a long black veil.
Chorus
Chorus